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“Operational guidance is encouraging, with the company expecting solid revenue and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation growth. However, it did flag net profit after tax growth would be slower than EBITDA growth, due to higher interest costs and amortisation," Citi said.

A balancing act

Mr Bassat said SEEK was trying balance reinvestment with dividends. It declared a 16¢ second-half dividend.

“We’re in a nice spot over the next few years, so that we will see a really nice cash pile. Whether that means . . . we find some really terrific investment opportunities that make sense, and we keep dividends growing at the level we’re at, or we don’t and we increase our dividends, we don’t intend to sit on a large stockpile of cash." More than 20 per cent of local job-seekers say they got their last position from SEEK.

With LinkedIn providing an alternative to traditional job boards, SEEK is focused on job placements, a market Morgans analyst Ivor Ries has estimated to be worth about $8 billion a year, compared with a much smaller job ad market.

Mr Bassat said the job placement strategy was progressing well, with 4.2 million users profiles – information such as where a person works and what kind of job they are looking for – and more than 50 per cent of traffic coming from mobiles.

“This was never going to be a one-year story . . . but it’s been tracking really well in terms of a lot of the underlying things we’re looking at, in terms of having our 4.2 million profiles, in terms of mobile being a much more important part of the mix, with more than 50 per cent of traffic. I think we’ve had about 35 product updates in the course of the last 12 months, which is a much, much bigger number than we’ve had before.

“So they’re the short-term things we’ve been looking at and we’re very pleased. So hopefully over the next few years you’ll start to see that impact on the placement numbers."

Ivor Ries said the share-price fall on the results suggested SEEK was suffering “from a case of high P/E-itis", referring to its price-earnings ratio of almost 33. “It’s the same as Carsales and REA. They got smashed on the day, and then everyone realised there was nothing to be concerned about," he said. “People can seize on whatever mote they find."

He said SEEK’s result was in line with mark expectations and the guidance was “probably a bit better than I had anticipated."